84 BETTER VILLAGES

erosion can only mean increasing malnutrition and disease
and final destruction for man and beast. Far more profit
and far more occupation can be got out of the hillsides by
developing trees for fruit, timber and fodder and other
industrial purposes and by leaving the grass to grow, than
by sending a horde of lean and bony beasts to jostle for a
living by grazing.1 Left to themselves, the best fodder
grasses will flourish and spread and the}* can then be cut
and fed to a row of sleek buffaloes stalled at the foot of the
hill. There are villages in the Hoshiarpur District which
not only feed all their cattle from the grass cut on their
carefully preserved hillsides but pay all their land revenue
from the surplus which the}' sell. Wealth is no longer
counted by herds of cattle ; six good milkers in a stall are
worth sixty milkless brutes starving on a hillside. It is
absurd to suppose that a good milker can keep up its milk
supply if it has to climb hills all day to forage for its food.
A good milker is an artificial creature and must be main-
tained by artificial methods. Hordes of cattle even in the
plains are a source of loss and poverty to their owners. In
the hills they spell ruin to the plainsman as well as to their
owners.

Trees are not everywhere essential to the regeneration
of the hillsides. Trees, bushes and grass all have their
part to play and are all included in the term ' forest '.
Whichever of the three, alone or in combination with the
others, makes the best contribution to the welfare of the
people must be encouraged in each particular locality. In
some places bushes help the grass, and give the best pro-
tection to the soil. In others the growth of useless bushes
ousts the useful grasses or makes them impossible to cut.
In such cases where the bushes are not essential to the

1 See p. 95.